200 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
200 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
FEBRUARY 1990
|
||
|
||
|
||
CRITICAL INCIDENT STRESS DEBRIEFING
|
||
|
||
By
|
||
|
||
Capt. Richard J. Conroy, M.S.
|
||
Assistant Chief of Police
|
||
Saint Cloud, FL Police Department
|
||
|
||
|
||
* As the first responder to an early
|
||
morning pedestrian accident, a police
|
||
officer comes across a severed leg
|
||
protruding from a shoe lying in the
|
||
middle of the highway prior to locating
|
||
the victim.
|
||
|
||
* While stopping his car, a "back-up"
|
||
officer responding to a domestic distur-
|
||
bance call sees a fellow officer take a
|
||
shotgun blast to the stomach just as the
|
||
front door to the residence opens without
|
||
warning.
|
||
|
||
* An 18-month-old child is pulled from the
|
||
family's backyard pool by the first responding
|
||
police officer, only to have the child pro-
|
||
nounced dead at the hospital emergency room.
|
||
|
||
These accounts typify the wide-range of emotionally
|
||
traumatic incidents that law enforcement officers may encounter.
|
||
As first responders on the scene, they must act without delay,
|
||
often without the support or backup of other emergency services
|
||
personnel.
|
||
|
||
Research conducted by Dr. Jeffrey T. Mitchell (1) of the
|
||
University of Maryland suggests that almost 90 percent of all
|
||
emergency services personnel are affected at least once by
|
||
critical incident stress during their careers.
|
||
|
||
In the past 2 decades, much emphasis has been placed on the
|
||
effects of critical incident stress on the emergency services
|
||
worker who is not a law enforcement officer. Unfortunately, the
|
||
law enforcement community has been rather slow to accept the
|
||
fact that critical incident stress can also be a potentially
|
||
debilitating syndrome that seriously affects both the job
|
||
performance and personal lives of police officers. (2)
|
||
|
||
CRITICAL INCIDENT STRESS
|
||
|
||
Critical incident stress can be brought on by any action
|
||
that causes extraordinary emotion and overwhelms and impacts on
|
||
an individual's normal ability to cope, either immediately
|
||
following the incident or in the future. Police officers' human
|
||
coping mechanisms are no different than those of others, just
|
||
because they carry a badge and a gun. And the myth that police
|
||
officers always have total emotional control in all situations is
|
||
just that a myth, not a reality.
|
||
|
||
Any incident that results in deep emotional impact has the
|
||
potential to overwhelm an officer's ability to cope. Oftentimes,
|
||
it makes the officer come face to face with his or her
|
||
vulnerability or sense of mortality, such as in an
|
||
officer-involved shooting, the death or serious injury of a
|
||
co-worker, prolonged or extraordinary rescue operations, or
|
||
life-threatening, dangerous, or ``close'' calls.
|
||
|
||
For the most part, society expects law enforcement officers
|
||
to handle whatever comes their way, to turn emotions on and off
|
||
at will. But, is it reasonable to expect police officers to be
|
||
all things to all people? And what happens if they can't live up
|
||
to the expectations society places on them? Are there solutions
|
||
to the problem?
|
||
|
||
THE DEBRIEFING PROCESS
|
||
|
||
The Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) process has
|
||
been developed in an effort to make law enforcement officers and
|
||
emergency service workers understand that they are normal people,
|
||
having normal reactions to abnormal events or situations. These
|
||
debriefings are not the operational critiques that law
|
||
enforcement administrators traditionally schedule after a major
|
||
incident. Instead, they are gatherings led by a trained mental
|
||
health professional with the assistance of supportive peer
|
||
personnel.
|
||
|
||
The concept behind these debriefings is to encourage free
|
||
expression of thoughts, fears, and concerns in a supportive
|
||
group environment without losing status among one's peers. In
|
||
fact, debriefings are much more successful and the feedback more
|
||
positive when peer support personnel are more active. (3)
|
||
|
||
The debriefing process allows individuals to gain insight
|
||
and reframe the event in a different perspective. As short-term
|
||
initial intervention, it often aids in preventing some of the
|
||
long-term cumulative effects caused by traumatic incidents.
|
||
|
||
Some departments require personnel to attend a debriefing
|
||
session after being involved in a critical stress incident, while
|
||
others make attendance a personal choice.
|
||
|
||
All debriefings are confidential and provide an opportunity
|
||
for educating officers on stress responses, as well as letting
|
||
those involved know that they are not alone in their thoughts and
|
||
feelings. Successful law enforcement debriefings have been
|
||
conducted after the Winnetka, IL, school shooting, the Palm Bay,
|
||
FL, shopping center shooting, and the Cerritos, CA, air disaster.
|
||
|
||
DEBRIEFING TEAMS
|
||
|
||
Debriefing teams are support groups composed of volunteer
|
||
trained mental health professionals and emergency workers who
|
||
learn to talk with others about job-related stress. The team
|
||
counsels others on dealing with the emotional toll of their
|
||
professions.
|
||
|
||
Team members undergo 16 hours of training before they can
|
||
conduct a counseling session, which is usually scheduled within
|
||
48 hours after emergency workers have been involved in a critical
|
||
incident. During the training, these volunteers are taught to
|
||
identify critical incidents and the physical and emotional
|
||
symptoms resulting from them, as well as delayed stress
|
||
reactions.
|
||
|
||
Team members must also become familiar with a debriefing
|
||
model. Basically, this model covers how to get people to
|
||
identify what happened, their role in the incident, and what
|
||
impact the incident had on them. If additional assistance is
|
||
needed after the debriefing session, the individual is given a
|
||
list of referrals to contact for one-on-one counseling.
|
||
|
||
Almost 100 CISD teams across the country operate on
|
||
national, statewide, regional, and local levels. These teams
|
||
have conducted in excess of 4,500 debriefings for law
|
||
enforcement, as well as other emergency services workers since
|
||
1983.
|
||
|
||
A number of larger police agencies have formed their own
|
||
departmental teams and have trained peer debriefers, written
|
||
operational procedures, and gathered administrative support for
|
||
the CISD concept. Other police agencies have networked their
|
||
members into county and regional teams where multidisciplinary
|
||
resources from police, fire, emergency medical, hospital,
|
||
chaplaincy, and mental health are pooled and shared as the need
|
||
arises.
|
||
|
||
LAW ENFORCEMENT CONCERNS
|
||
|
||
The many administrative misconceptions about police
|
||
involvement with mental health professionals are changing. The
|
||
philosophies like ``we can handle anything'' and ``it all comes
|
||
with the job, take it or leave it'' are becoming archaic.
|
||
|
||
Police managers who have witnessed officers suffering from a
|
||
vast array of emotional, physical, and behavioral symptoms are
|
||
beginning to recognize that these conditions can be the resulting
|
||
effects of critical incident stress. Employee turnover, sick
|
||
leave abuse, an increase in alcohol consumption, extreme
|
||
aggressiveness, and substance abuse are just a few of the outward
|
||
signs that an officer may need help from the department and
|
||
peers.
|
||
|
||
Training and education in the area of stress management have
|
||
become somewhat common practices in the police profession.
|
||
Within the past few years, any law enforcement conference,
|
||
workshop, or seminar would not be complete without a segment or
|
||
speaker on stress management, stress symptoms and their effects.
|
||
But, there is still a long road to travel. Agency administrators
|
||
need to realize that training programs will be more effective if
|
||
they cover more than just the basics of stress education.
|
||
Programs should encourage the dissemination of information
|
||
specific to critical incident stress and the associated
|
||
debriefing process.
|
||
|
||
CONCLUSION
|
||
|
||
Providing critical incident stress debriefing services to
|
||
law enforcement officers should be no different than giving
|
||
officers the proper tools and equipment to perform their jobs
|
||
correctly. Agency administrators owe it to their communities to
|
||
assist in dealing with the effects of critical incident stress.
|
||
The well-being of their departments, officers, and the citizens
|
||
they serve depend on it.
|
||
|
||
|
||
FOOTNOTES
|
||
|
||
(1) Jeffrey T. Mitchell, Roles, Stressors and Supports for
|
||
Emergency Workers, National Institute of Mental Health, U.S.
|
||
Department of Health and Human Services, 1985.
|
||
|
||
(2) Thomas Pierson, ``Critical Incident Stress: A Serious Law
|
||
Enforcement Problem,'' The Police Chief, vol. 66, No. 2, pp.
|
||
32-33.
|
||
|
||
(3) Jeffrey T. Mitchell, Critical Incident Stress Debriefing
|
||
Training Seminar, Orlando, FL, April 1989.
|
||
|